Hi there everyone, if anybody could help me with this I'd really appreciate it!
I had 2 goldfish last week but when I came back from a week away one had died (BF was looking after them) so I bought 3 new ones to keep the survivor company. I was told by the fish shop that I just needed to change half the water before I introduced them all. So far though, things are not looking good!
One has unfortunately already died, it spent the whole weekend near the top of the tank barely moving and blowing bubbles.
My main concern is with the surviving fish. She has barely moved from the bottom of the tank in 2 days and I think she may have an internal bleed which is spreading as lots of her scales have gone red (at first I wondered whether it was just that she'd picked up pink dye from the stones we have in the tank but it's spotted all over now). Any advice on whether I can save her would be great.
The other 2 fish are just looking very lazy, one is swimming well occasionally but spending a lot of time floating near the top, the other has decided to retreat into the ornamental diving helment & when we do see it he looks lazy.
Could there be something wrong with the water? Please help - I want to keep them alive! Many Thanks!!
Hi guys,
Thanks for trying to help me. Sorry I didn't give the required information, just never had to think about it as my last lot of fish were generally very healthy!
The tank capacity is 23 litres. I change a large proportion of the water (up to half) weekly and about every 3 weeks-month I clean the entire tank out. I don't add anything to the water except tap water conditioner.
I've gone out and bought some Protozin for fungal infections because I've noticed that all the fish have white spots on their tails & some red one their bellies, this is what I was recommended to do in the pet shops.
Hi Jules,
First off, it's great that you've come here for fish help. I mean, not great that your fish need help - we always want healthy fish!
Your fish sound in a bad way. You say you've never had to really think about your watr or tank before because your last fish were healthy. What happened to these other fish? Were they goldfish? How long did you have them?
Goldfish can quite happily live to be 15 or 20 years old so if your last fish were goldfish and they died while under this age, there
was something wrong. The most common mistake people make with goldfish is to listen to the pet shop. Pets shops make a bonus from selling lots and lots of goldfish as they are very popular. They make even more money from selling lots and lots of cute, small tanks, often with bright gravel and other ornaments. These are largely aimed at children but appeal to a wide market.
This is the worst thing a shop can do - it spreads the myth that goldfish are small, easy to care for pets. They are anything but!
You say your tank is 23 litres - that is nealy 15 times smaller than my goldfish tank, which is 290 litres. My tank is bigger than it strictly speaking needs to be, but not by much given that I plan to keep 3-4 goldfish in it (which is the number you want to keep). The reason for this huge, 4 foot long tank is that goldfish get big. REALLY big. Fancy goldfish like fantails, orandas and blackmoors can reach 8 inches long and several inches deep. Common goldfish, your run-of-the-mill fairground goldfish, comets and other single-tailed species get even bigger, with individuals expcted to reach 18 inches with good care. These kinds of fish are both more common to buy and more demanding on their owner. I would not like to see these larger fish in anything other than a pond. Given their need for cold water, lots of oxygen and LOTS of space, there are very few tanks equipped to handle them. I wouldn't ven put one in my 290 litre tank so I am quite happy with my 'little' fancy goldfish.
So, the first consideration is the effect the tank will be having on the fish. In the long term, small tanks kill goldfish. OK, they do that in the short term as well. The reasons for this are as follows:
1) No space to grow - the fish end up stunted and in pain. Long term, they end up dead as their little, cramped, crippled bodies can't hold on any longer. They may look 'fine' to the untrained eye but any goldfish that is still small enough to fit into a 23 litre tank after 6 months or so is in a VERY bad way. Stunted fish
can live to be 5-10 years old, sometimes longer, but they are still living with a horrible, potentially painful condition.
2) Dirty water - the smaller the tank, the faster the water gets dirty. And we're not just talking algae, green water and bits of poo. It will be dirty at a chemical level as the chemicals the fish secrete as they respire and excrete build up. The main worry here is ammonia which the fish produce themselves. This can't be seen or smelt in the tank but it is there. The second major worry is nitrite, which is a by-product of a bacterial reaction to the ammonia. Both of these chemicals should not exist in a large, healthy goldfish tank but they are very difficult to control in a small tank. Both of these chemicals hurt and kill fish, even in small doses. The final major worry with the water is nitrate. This is less harmful than the first two but still nasty in large doses. Small doses are not generally seen as too harmful but even relatively 'low' doses such as 30-40 parts-per-million (ppm) are a worry as they can show poor tank maintainence.
3) Filtration - the smaller the tank, the smaller the filter can be. Small filters and goldfish do NOT mix. Goldfish need clean, highly oxygenated water and this requries a big filter. My preference for goldfish is an external filter. This option is not avaliable to a small tank and lack of filtration means that there are not enough bacteria in the filter to keep the water chemically clean. It is the bacteria in the filter that use up the ammonia and nitrite and make the tank safe. Not knowing what these chemicals are implies that you have been mislead, misinformed and generally screwed over by the shop you got the fish from. Sadly, many shops are like this - lots of fish, small tanks, make it sound easy . . . and you spend money, go away happy and then when you have a problem, they get more money from the replacement fish and chemicals you'll buy.
To help your fish, do three things:
1) Do a 75% water change NOW. Wait for 10 minutes then do another one. Ignore anyone who talks about you getting rid of "good, mature" water or slowing down the bacterial cycle - if they're saying that (and many pet shop workers do), they don't know how the cycle works. There is no such thing as mature water and if you do a water change properly, it isn't much stress on the fish at all. Match the temperature with your hand, add the water conditioner and get it into the tank. Make sure you clean the gravel with a gravel sipon as well!
2) Get a liquid test kit for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. I recommend the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. It could be £15-£30, depending on where you get it, but that's not much to save those little lives you have. Test your water (following the instructions exactly) and post the results here. If you have ammonia or nitrite above ZERO, do another water change like in step 1. Even if it is only a little bit above zero. These chemicals are killers, remember that.
3) Consider whether you can afford the big tank/pond or whether goldfish are the fish you want to keep. If you want 2 fancy goldfish (and I nver recommend keeping them alone as they get bloody miserable), you'll need at least 150 litres. That's a 3 foot tank. You'll also need a hefty filter that pumps 7-10x the volume of the tank around every hour. If you want more, add 50 litres for each additional fish. Bigger is always better. If you have common goldfish, comets or shubunkins, get them into a pond ASAP. If you don't want a big tank/pond, find someone to take the goldfish. Remember - the pet shop will probably just sell them to someone else with a small tank. Depending on where you live and what fish they are, you might be able to find someone on a forum to take them. I might even be able to take a couple.
You say the fish have white spots? Are they fluffy patches? Are there wounds underneath them? Or are they like grains of salt? If they are fluffy but there are no wounds, you'll be best with a fin-rot treatment if they are on the fins or a external bacterial treatment. If there is a wound as well, it is more likely to be a fungus. If they are little spots, you need to stop treatment, do a big water change, run some carbon in the filter for a day or so and then get a whitespot treatment and some aquarium salts.
The red streaks in the fins are worrying - potentially something very nasty called septicemia. This might be treated with a heavy duty bacterial treatment but don't get your hopes up. Red marks could also mean wounds, scrapes or ammonia burns. Some photos of the fish will help confirm.
Finally, what water conditioner do you use? Improving this *may* also help the fish out, especially if your don't know what chemicals are in your tap water or if you know your tap water has chloramine in it. I always recommend people use a water conditioner that removes chlorine, chloramine, ammonia associated with chloramines and heavy metals.
Sorry that was pretty epic! Try to take it all in and let us know how you get on.
